Posted
by
kdawsonon Friday May 14, 2010 @12:35PM
from the send-yourself-to-jail dept.

An anonymous reader writes "An Argentinian politician who introduced a law to send plagiarists to jail for three to eight years appears to have plagiarized the explanation of his bill directly from Wikipedia. The bulk of his explanation is three paragraphs that are taken, verbatim, from Wikipedia, without acknowledgment."

"Do as I say don't do as I do, some politicians outside of Argentina also have that attitude;-)"

In my experience, that's what all politicians do. As do the cops. They set bad examples for the rest of us.

No joke. The constitutions and other founding legal documents of all modern governments should have included a clause stating that when any politician, law enforcement officer, or other government official breaks the law, they will be subject to three times the penalty (fines, duration of incarceration, or both) that an ordinary citizen would suffer had he or she done the same. The reasoning is that when they break the law, it represents a threat to the institution of law and the concept of the rule of law, both of which are fundamental and essential to the functioning of modern society.

Also, if the politicians and particularly the cops really wanted to improve their public image then the honest ones would stop looking the other way when they have knowledge of the corruption of the dishonest ones. Cops in particular are rather brave people; facing an armed assailant is "all in a day's work" for them and a possibility they accept willingly. Therefore, this cannot be a matter of courage or fear of retribution and is instead a matter of complicity. That complicity makes them just as guilty as those whose corruption they ignore. This is one of the main reasons why they are sometimes perceived as thugs who act only in their own self-interests while pretending to protect and serve.

The only other thing that would dramatically improve relations between the general public and government would be to end the War on (some) Drugs. It began for mostly racist reasons and persists as a form of class war. The only reason why the proceeds from drug dealers might fund criminal organizations and create more crime is because there is high demand for these products that is not going away and no legitimate, honest business that can compete in an open market with them. There is also no moral justification for telling adults what they may or may not do with their own bodies and no ethical basis for imprisoning those users who are responsible and do not pose a danger to others with their habit.

The classic example of this is someone who comes home from work and relaxes with a joint, does not drive, does not leave his home, and does not disturb his neighbors. What case is there for putting such a person through the nightmare world of our legal system? He or she is not violating anyone else's civil rights. How does persecuting such a person benefit society or create the perception of good and competent governance? Anyone who doesn't think such abuses foster an adversarial relationship between citizens and government has little grasp of reality.

We do need to end the War on (all) Drugs. Legalize the ones, such as marijuana, that are relatively harmless. Decriminalizing everything else and making the punishment drug treatment, along with the legalization of relatively benign substances, would reduce the power of organized crime in the Americas to ashes within a year or two.

No, not so far today! In so much as marijuana is not particularly addictive, if at all, and that there is no known LD-50 for it, and the fact that it has no long term effects on your organs (you don't have to smoke it), etc., etc. Yes. It is safe, or at least safe enough that the government has no business prohibiting it, especially given that any harm marijuana may cause to its users is rendered moot by the harm caused by prohibition. For instance the Mexican cartels make somewhere between 60% and 75%

It doesn't, however chronic marijuana use is as debilitating as chronic alcohol use. It's very easy to spend weeks months even years stoned. That is harmful to the individual and society however being dosed up with antidepressants or Valium or other prescribed drugs can be just as bad if not worse and although legal they are not such a great alternative, marijuana is often used in place of prescribed drugs.

Addendum: A clause stating that when any president, pope or politician declares war, they shall lead the charge themselves physically, and if incapable their spouses, first-born children, brothers, sisters and or parents must take their place on the front line.

Sending other peoples children to fight and die with no measurable sacrifice of your own: fuck that.

That may be reasonable from an empathy standpoint, but you're completely ignoring the fact that we live in a modern society with specialization of labors.
As unfair as it is, some people find that military service is the kind of job that suits them personally, while others do things like law, IT, engineering, or a host of other specializations. Your argument is totally valid for any sort of draft, though. Drafts should start with children of elected officials.

No joke. The constitutions and other founding legal documents of all modern governments should have included a clause stating that when any politician, law enforcement officer, or other government official breaks the law, they will be subject to three times the penalty (fines, duration of incarceration, or both) that an ordinary citizen would suffer had he or she done the same. The reasoning is that when they break the law, it represents a threat to the institution of law and the concept of the rule of law

Many laws have various types of aggravating circumstances. Abuse of a position of authority in the commission of a crime actually is frequently considered to be one. "All are equal before the law" does not prohibit taking circumstances into account, or accounting for aggravating and mitigating factors in sentencing.

That being the case, the central problem is exactly the one you identified. If those in a position of authority never get prosecuted for their crimes at all, the question of what we would sentence them to if they were becomes rather moot.

As to this idiot, I hope if they pass his law they make him its first prosecution. It's the very definition of arrogance and believing you're above the law to commit the very crime you're trying to prohibit others from doing while writing the law to prohibit it.

The classic example of this is someone who comes home from work and relaxes with a joint, does not drive, does not leave his home, and does not disturb his neighbors. What case is there for putting such a person through the nightmare world of our legal system? He or she is not violating anyone else's civil rights.

No, but he or she is guilty of unauthorized personal pleasure, and the powers that be can't have that.

Sort of. We are actually a bit ahead of you sometimes on that subject. Long before your country came up with Bushisms, we had Menemisms. Just look up some of the stupid stuff Menem has said. He was a fucking psycho, and when confronted by the camera he would just make up something.

Given it's an unwritten requirement for being a politician, I would suspect almost all of them to be like that, regardless of state or country. Every now and then you get a humane politician that sucks horribly at these unwritten requirements... but not very often.

I'd go so far as to say that the purpose of entrenched political parties without whom you have no chance of election, party primary systems, and the inability to even get on the ballot without a great deal of sponsorship is simple. The purpose is to make sure that such humane politicians never make it through the system, since whoring themselves and their beliefs and principles to the highest bidder is anathema to them. Yet watching which way the wind blows and committing yourself to it wholeheartedly, as though the trend of the day was always your most deeply cherished belief, and always knowing on which side your bread is buttered is a requirement of advancing through this system. Thus, the political and monied interests who have the most to lose from a change in the status quo are also the gatekeepers deciding who does and does not stand a chance of holding public office.

It's why nothing ever really changes because "change" has been redefined to mean "becoming more so" or "advancing further down the path we were already on". Again I wish I could attribute that saying about our politics becoming more polar and divisive while our parties become more homogeneous, for this is more evidence of what I am saying.

Look, I'm from Argentina. I'll tell you what, nobody is going to enforce it in this case. This has not yet arrived to mainstream news, but if it does everyone will laugh at it, and nothing else. Our concept of plagiarism is radically different from what I read about the United States. Consider that our local social networking site [taringa.net] is a "linksharing" web, where users post about almost any topic. (Mainly: megaupload links).

AH, I realize you're being trollish in expressing your opinion. And I don't usually feed the trolls, but here I go anyways.

The XKCD comic on Malamanteau is funny for the exact reason you don't get it. You (yes you) and others like you are what make it funny.

You see, the comic is a joke on you. It wasn't funny in its outright, it was funny because of all the reaction to it.

The reaction was understood by the author, before it was even penned. The reaction was guaranteed, which is what makes the whole thing so damn funny. All the posturing and preening and asshattery being done in the name of Wankipedia (sic) is part of the joke.

You don't get the joke, because you're on the wrong side of the joke. You probably take this kind of thing way too seriously to realize what I'm saying, which makes the whole thing even funnier than it was just a moment ago.

It is was a perfectly genius stroke of humor. And I'm still laughing... but mostly at people like you who won't get the joke.

You got it all wrong. I love XKCD. I've read literally every comic it has ever been posted, including some off-site drawings by Randall, including the ones for IBM, and others.

Lately, XKCD has been unfunny. Actually, most comics has been mostly irrelevant. Not funny, not witty, not interesting. I just didn't like the comic. Do you know why? Because It didn't make me laugh. It is just not funny. It has nothing to do with how I feel about wikipedia.

No she did NOT... bloody hell... everybody stops reading after the first definition.

Irony has THREE definitions in any decent dictionary.The third one dates right back to ancient greek tragic theater. It's the case where despite all human endeavour a good person nevertheless gets fucked over at the whim of the gods. And the name for that is IRONY. Drop the greek religious bit (which is acceptable ever since we STOPPED living in ancient greeks) and voila, you have tragic irony.Every single line of that song is a perfect example of that type of Irony.

Yes indeed, when it comes right down to it "shit out of luck" IS one of the valid meanings of the word "ironic".When you throw in that these were SONG lyrics - that means she had poetic freedom, and tragic irony coming out of theater is a clear case of poetry (the line is not as wide as we think - remember Aristotle's groundbreaking paper on theater was called 'the poetics' - and that third meaning was FIRST defined in that same paper).

That's the really ironic bit... the meaning of "irony" that smart-ass geeks always complain about is the oldest and MOST accurate use of the word ! (Can you guess which of the three meanings I'm of irony I used there ?)

So what do you call it when smart-assedness turns into a mass-advertisement of your ignorance ?

I disagree with your interpretation of tragic irony in a modern sense. Every dictionary I can find either makes no mention of tragic irony or has a definition that makes it only a subset of dramatic irony in which the audience knows the truth of a situation but the characters in the drama (in this case a tragedy) do not. This would generally lead to an inappropriate response to a situation because (as I defined before with the first definition of irony) there is a disco

Well I'm the guy who majored in English literature... make of that what you will...

Now indeed - what you say about the details of the definition is true, but I don't come to the same conclusion as you. The Gods of ancient Greece in much contemporary drama is replaced by circumstances we cannot control. A sort of a dramatists version of chaos theory ganging up on you if you will.

Now the lyrics HAVE got an audience- we the listeners, we see the difference between the plan, and the circumstances that foil it

Yes, that was the lay person's version of it. There is a bit more to it- but in general - there's a clear sense of dramatic irony in all of Alanis's examples. More specifically - they all show planning and effort toward something good, spoiled by circumstances utterly outside your ability to control. Which is Irony - at least, in certain contexts.

This makes me wonder how many politicians who favor strong copyright enforcement and huge windfalls for the RIAA download music illegally? Or about how many have children that do. Would G.W. Bush have favored the industry in the same way if his daughters had been sued for copyright infringement? I'm not sure, but I find it difficult to believe that legislators don't download songs illegally and believe themselves to be immune.

While I was in seventh grade, I missed a week of school due to an illness. My first day back in English class, we were told spend the hour writing an essay about the evils of plagiarism. In retrospect, it's obvious what happened in my absence, but at the time I didn't know what the word meant, just that it was bad. So, I wrote an essay on the evils of communism, substituting the word plagiarism throughout. Yes, I discussed the possibility of godless plagiarists taking over the country and forcing a plagiarist regime upon the American people. I don't think we got a grade for it, but the teacher thought it was pretty hilarious.

While I was in seventh grade, I missed a week of school due to an illness. My first day back in English class, we were told spend the hour writing an essay about the evils of plagiarism. In retrospect, it's obvious what happened in my absence, but at the time I didn't know what the word meant, just that it was bad. So, I wrote an essay on the evils of satanism, substituting the word plagiarism throughout. Yes, I discussed the possibility of godless satanists taking over the country and forcing a satanist re

I remember other stories like this with congresscritters and senator types putting up copyrighted songs or text on their websites and being surprised when it's pointed out. It seems that they generally have a subconscious understanding of fair usage and consider it common-sense... thinking that copyright law is the realm of printed book and pirated movies being sold on street corners. It would explain a lot if they're pushing for harsher penalties without understanding the frequency that common people unk

Remember when employment discrimination due to gender and race was outlawed? Not for Congress, as they excluded themselves! As far as copyrights and patents go, most governments that enforce such rules write exemptions for "public use." For example, the US government can implement any patent as long as the patent holder is reasonably compensated. The fact that Representatives act irresponsibly in regard to handling such exemptions is just another proof that power corrupts.

I live in Argentina and have read the original proposal. In fact he's proposing to up the penalties for misrepresenting, selling fake property as the original or selling property without that you don't own. Basically, you could sell fake goods, but you'd have to state it, thus, you'll be infringing on copyright. It's not so much about plagiarism as about misrepresentation and selling of fake goods as originals.Having said that, I still think what he did was despicable and I seriously doubt his wits to be a representative. But which country is proud of its politicians? I would seriously consider moving there!

Isn't Argentina the place where you can go on vacation and come home to find that your house has been sold and the courts will tell you to fuck off because the new owners didn't do anything wrong and so shouldn't have to give you your house back? Where you have to spraypaint NOT FOR SALE on your house to keep people from selling it when you go out overnight?

When I read this article, I immediately thought, what if he edited wikipedia (with a sockpuppet) to coincide with his bill before he introduced it? He can't be said to plagiarize his own text, after all.

The revision history [wikipedia.org] of the article reveals that the current first three paragraphs were written [wikipedia.org] on 19 April 2010 by Andreasmperu [wikipedia.org], who has been a prolific spanish wikipedia user for some years, is certainly not a sock puppet, is probably a woman, and may be from Peru.

Since I have disposed with the sock puppet theory, I feel comfortable embracing the much more humorous prevailing theory (pleasantly reinforcing my preconceptions about politicians) that Gerónimo Vargas Aignasse did in fact plagiarize the text of his plagiarism bill.

From TFA: Just to make sure someone didn't do the opposite and take the text of the introduction and make it the Wikipedia page, I looked, and as I'm typing this, the Wikipedia page hasn't been updated since April -- and it looks like the bulk of that page has actually been in place for quite some time. The bill was introduced on May 6th.

Is there really room for crediting wikipedia in a legal bill? That seems silly to me. A law isn't an artistic endeavour. It has no direct commercial value. Applying the notion of IP to it makes no sense. I would have thought that the groupthink on Slashdot would lean towards disgust at this assumption of the blanket application of IP as a concept, but perhaps schadenfreude comes first.

You missed the point. I am still disgusted with blanket application of IP. It is not hypocritical to cite the hypocrisy and use it for justification of why blanket application of IP is bad. He just shouldn't have made the law on plagiarism, and if he did he needs to stick to it. The problem is that everything is plagiarized. Did you invent fire? Did you cite Ug for his knowledge of fire? I didn't think so. We're all in this together and the more we share information the better off we'll all be. Ide

AFAIK, law acts are strictly exempt from copyright - either you copyright it or enforce it, never both. This applies to all law-binding texts - bills, EULAs, contracts and so on. That's also why "boilerplate licenses" are so common - you are perfectly legal to take some company's EULA, replace the company name and use it as your own (you'd better understand the clauses though). I'm not sure if it works like this in -all- countries, but definitely in most.

However being punished for plagiarism is completely discrediting all the work that you did do. I am always worried about my citations in college because of the EVIL PLAGIARISM which has all the consequences including failing the class. If the professor was a real dick, they will find a error in your process and then fail you because of this. Ignoring all you work.

"I am always worried about my citations in college because of the EVIL PLAGIARISM which has all the consequences including failing the class. If the professor was a real dick, they will find a error in your process and then fail you because of this."

What institution do you go to? I'm astonished that they'd look at technical errors in citation format (is this what you're referring to?) rather than if the intent of the student was to claim credit for the work of others. I certainly couldn't imagine any major

Even in the "real world", where it should be (and is) perfectly fine to use someone else's work to solve a problem its still wrong to take credit for it.

Yes! But just because it's wrong, that doesn't mean we laws against it to send people to jail. Honor code violations, sure, expulsion from your university for egregious and blatant cases, yes. (Though I'd avoid the academic fundamentalists who would kick you out of school for getting the italics wrong on a citation and call that "plagiarism"... okay, I exx

Hey, this is Slashdot, remember? The atmosphere here tends to be seriously skeptical of the stronger notions of legal protection of "intellectual property."

Seriousl skepticism is a virtue for any rational subject. That is, it's the wrong tool for questions like "do you love this person" but the absolutely correct tool for questions like "should this group enjoy stronger special legal protections?" If the concept is valid, it will survive skepticism because its merits will be demonstrable. The skepticism

If we have rules for intellectual property, we should have them for intellectual fraud too.

I disagree. Plagiarism is morally wrong, but that doesn't mean it has to be illegal. There are lots of things that are morally wrong but not illegal (e.g. cheating on your spouse). That's the way it should be: for the vast majority of things, social norms and consequences (including public outcry, shaming, damage to reputation, etc.) are more than sufficient. Laws should only be enacted in those rare cases where the public safety or public good needs more protection. To do otherwise gives the lawmakers/enfo

Even in the "real world", where it should be (and is) perfectly fine to use someone elses work to solve a problem its still wrong to take credit for it.

Failing to cite a source is not the same as taking credit for the idea. When people talk to me every day I do not assume that they invented everything that comes out of their mouths. That would make me an idiot.

Stealing credit for something is, in my opinion, morally repugnant. Failing to cite a source, but not in such a way that I get the false impression

It's not fraudulent in the legal sense, which is what the OP was referring to.

For example, if you went around saying you built the Statue of Liberty, you would not be arrested for fraud. That is because simply lying, or taking credit for other people's work, or being an overall jerkwad, is not illegal.

As a rule of thumb never go into something where the worst thing that could happen is that you succeed. Plagiarism is not illegal. But is what this legislator wants. If he succeed, he should be penalized by his own law.

Fortunately there are laws that takes precedence. Murphy's laws in general, and Hanlon's Razor in particular should apply in this case: never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity.

From Wikipedia's Terms of Use:
"Wikimedia projects are required to grant broad permissions to the general public to re-distribute and re-use their contributions freely, as long as the use is attributed and the same freedom to re-use and re-distribute applies to any derivative works."

If he didn't cite Wikipedia (snicker) then he's at least violated their Terms of Use specifying a "Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0".. which I assume would be a copyright violation. But, IANAL.

Actually until the law is actually passed presumably what he has done is not yet illegal. In fact this could be an exceedingly devious scheme to convince people that the law is actually needed...although I highly doubt that is the case.